Students explore Burlington's hidden history

Edmunds Elementary teacher Lori Palmer and her students explore the history of immigration in an old Lebanese neighborhood on Maple Street in Burlington, Thursday.(Photo: LYNN MONTY/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo

Maps and old photos helped paint an historic picture of Downtown Burlington for Edmunds Elementary students Thursday.

The students have been studying a social studies unit called "Many Cultures, One City," which explores immigration in Burlington. Local historian Elise Guyette led the walking tour Thursday, which was designed to look beyond the offices, parking lots, and apartment complexes that stand in modern Burlington, to what they once were when originally erected.

Before leaving school grounds, students were asked what was different now compared to a photo of the school in 1925. One student cried out, "Everything is different!"

Others noticed trees are not the same, Main Street is wider now, the school used to stand alone, and the trolley track up the center of the street in the old photo is gone.

Twenty-one students took the tour. Another black and white photo depicted textile union workers sharing a celebratory meal at a mill that was on the corner of St. Paul and King streets in 1940.

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Historian Elise Guyette, director of Turning Points in American History, explains how people who broke the law where once held in stockades and hanged in City Hall Park when the county jailhouse was there. The students took a walking history tour through Burlington, Thursday.(Photo: LYNN MONTY/FREE PRESS)

Students learned that a blacksmith shop, and livery stable, once stood behind what is now TD Bank on St. Paul Street, and the building across the street, the one with the prominent red stone foundation, was once a hardware store.

"Look up! Look up!" Some of the students shouted while pointing at houses with slate roofing.

Guyette told the animated crew when slate was discovered in Poultney in 1843 craftsmen from Wales came to mine it, cut it, and shape it. The Welsh had been mining slate since 1399.

"Slate is fireproof, waterproof, and can last centuries," Guyette said.

Slate was once a popular way to shingle a roof. Today it's an expensive option, Guyette said.

Many Burlington buildings still sport the aged slate. Students competed to identify the largest number of slate roofs for a prize of ice cream at the end of the tour.

Student Gussie Guiette held up a 1943 photo of the Park Café at 143 Main St., then separated from the Flynn Theater by a bowling alley.

"At one time, the Greeks owned almost every restaurant in the city," Guyette said. "Park Café was a popular place to get dressed up for."

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Edmunds Elementary student Gussie Guiette and her class took a walking field trip through Downtown Burlington to learn about history, Thursday.(Photo: LYNN MONTY/FREE PRESS)

Next stop, City Hall Park where Guyette explain how people who broke the law were held in stockades and even hanged there.

Guyette highlighted The Black Snake Affair of the early 1800s, involving federal agents and smugglers on the Black Snake, a smuggling ship on Lake Champlain that was seized. A crew member was hanged in City Hall Park for murdering an agent. Tens of thousands of people came from all over Vermont to witness the event, Guyette said.

With the Embargo Act of 1807, limited trade with Canada cut off income for many living in the Champlain Valley, so Vermonters started a smuggling trade.

The Black Snake operated between Charlotte and Essex, N.Y. to smuggle potash across the border to markets in Canada. Potash was used to bleach textiles, and make glass and soap.

"It's a really great opportunity for us being right in the city where we have all these resources and history surrounding us that tie into culture," Teacher Lori Palmer said. "Taking this tour makes what we have learned more meaningful for the kids."

The walking tour was a hands-on way to learn history, Guyette said. "What I try to do is get kids excited about history," she said. "One significant thing everyone has learned is to look up more often, and to read building plaques."

Prior to the unit's start, Guyette created a booklet of historical downtown stops, and a teacher's guide.

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Edmunds Elementary students learn about a textile mill that is now an office building on St. Paul Street in Burlington during a walking field trip through the city, Thursday.(Photo: LYNN MONTY/FREE PRESS)

"It's been great," Guyette said of the pilot program. "Some kids came really prepared today, and some kids have developed more of an interest by examining these buildings up close. They all have come up with conclusions about how life has changed from the pictures they brought."

Palmer said the unit was a success and she would be introducing it to more students in the future.

While students stood on a Maple Street sidewalk looking for signs of the street's origins, Guyette explained some of the parking lots behind each building used to accommodate vast gardens of grape vines. It was a Lebanese neighborhood, and the residents liked to cook stuffed grape leaves, she said.

The grape leaves are gone, but one reminder that the area was once a Lebanese neighborhood is Handy's Lunch, still owned and operated by the Handy family, who are Lebanese. It's been there since 1945.

Contact Lynn Monty at LynnMonty@FreePressMedia.com and follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/VermontSongbird.